PC 01-23-2014 (Joint CC Meeting) CITY OF CUPERTINO
10300 Torre Avenue
Cupertino, CA 95014
CITY OF CUPERTINO SPECIAL JOINT MEETING
PLANNING COMMISSION AND THE 1-1OUSING COMMISSION
APPROVED SUMMARY
6:30 P.M. January 23, 2014 THURSDAY
CUPERTINO CITY HALL, EOC ROOM
The Special Joint meeting of the Cupertino Planning Commission and Housing Commission of January
23, 2014, was called to order at 6:30.p.m. in the Cupertino City Hall, EOC Room, 10300 Torre Avenue,
Cupertino, CA. by Com. Brophy.
SALUTE TO THE FLAG
ROLL CALL
Director of Community Development Aarti Shrivastava
City Planner Gary Chao
Asst. City Attorney Colleen Wnchester
Staff Diana Pancholi
MIG Laura Stepton
MIG Ellie Fiore
Planning Commissioners: Paul Brophy
Alan Takahashi
MargaretGong
Winnie Lee
Don Sun (absent)
APPROVAL OF MINUTES: None
WRITTEN COMMUNICATIONS: None
POSTPONEMENTS/REMOVAL FROM CALENDAR: None
CONSENT CALENDAR: None
ORAL COMMUNICATIONS: None
STUDY SESSION:
Presentation on the Housing Element update for the 5`'' Planning Cycle (Time Period: Jan. 31, 2015 —
Jan. 31, 2023) and the city's current regional Housing Needs Assessment and conduct a workshop to
collect public input.
Aarti Shrivastava,Director of Community Development:
• Introduced Laura Stepton,Consultant for the Housing Element.
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And Housing Commission Meeting
Laura Stepton,House Element Consultant:
• Reviewed the purpose of the study session with the Housing Commission which was to discuss what
the housing element is, and why the city is updating its housing element.
• She reviewed the slide presentation which included Housing Element Basics, Regional Housing
Needs Assessment (RHNA), Housing Needs Considerations including Aging Population/Workforce,
Jobs vs. Housing Growth, Hosing Costs vs. Earnings, What is Affordable Housing, Community
Benefits,Emerging Housing Concepts,and Community Input.
• The housing element is part of the city's General Plan, often called a blueprint or constitution for
development in the city. Each California city is required to have the plan, to lay out a path for how
the city wants to grow, develop, maintain, and improve over a 20 year period. Most cities update
their plan over a 15 to 20 year basis; Cupertino is doing a focused General Plan update now but the
housing element is different; it is the only element that is required to be updated on a regular basis; it
was 5 years and through legislation was changed to an 8 year period. It is an important community
activity that Cupertino will go through every 8 years to set its housing priorities and understand what
the community's housing needs are. It is also the only part of the General Plan required to be
certified by the State Dept. of Housing and Community Development, the deadline for adopting the
element is January 31, 2015.
• If the city meets the deadline and has an adopted Element by the deadline it means that the state has
found that the city has a legally adequate internally consistent General Plan that provides legal
protection from the city in a greater extent for many challenges to land use decisions. It also puts the
city in a much better position to compete for grants and loans that HCD and other agencies have
available.
• With the certified element, the city moves to the head of the class regarding issues that help build
housing in the community that is desirable. Without a certified element, there are some other state
mandates regarding how housing has to be built in the community; most cities like to be the masters
of their own destinies and they ensure they have adopted housing elements so there are no state
requirements that kick in. The housing element is a plan for not just building housing but maintaining
housing in the community; ensuring that everybody has equal access to housing no matter their
income range so that there's a broad array of housing opportunities both in the existing housing stock
as well as any new housing that might be built in Cupertino over the next 8 years or so.
• One of the key objectives that the city needs to meet as part of the housing element is provide for a
certain level of new housing development over the eight years; for some people it is a difficult thing
to want to do or understand because they feel there is a lot of housing already in Cupertino; but every
city and county in California is required to provide a fair share of housing, new housing development.
It is state law and it is a top down process from the state that comes through ABAG down to each
city.
• She reviewed the Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) process in which each city is
allocated a number of housing units. The number that is their RHNA is a goal; not an obligation; the
city is not required to ensure the housing is constructed or to construct that housing itself, it is merely
a goal for insuring that there are resources in place for the market to take its course and provide that
housing. Part of the RHNA deals with affordability level of housing and ensuring that there is
housing for all income levels. The state has said that in order to define.what affordable is,they define
it by density in cases.
• The city through the housing element needs to show that there are sites available to accommodate
housing for the various income levels for 1064 units divided up by the income categories. How do
you compare to your neighbors, where does the RHNA come from; is it based on population?
Because of the growth projected in the area the growth is distributed among all the cities in the
county. The issues-are when people can't afford to live in the community near where they work, it
does impact the community in many ways; economic development, businesses may suffer because
they find it is difficult to attract workers to their community because they have to live so far away.
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And Housing Commission Meeting
• She discussed affordable housing. In the last 20 years the paradigm has completely changed in the
Bay Area; there'are many people who once could ,afford homes, have good jobs, and still can't afford
housing in the Cupertino area because of the demand for all kinds of housing. Affordable housing as
defined by the federal government says that if you are spending more than 30% of the household
income on your housing that means that you are being cost burdened'; you are in need of more
affordable housing because you a paying more than 30% for either rent or mortgage and costs
associated with it, such as insurance that comes with home ownership. In Cupertino 33% of all
households are considered paying more for housing than the federal criteria; 51% of elderly
households are paying more for housing than they can afford. Who can afford housing in the region
and in Cupertino in particular. An average software developer earning $127K per year could afford
to pay about $3200 a month for housing; a retiree earning less than $30K year, in order to not be
overburdened they would need to be paying$729:per month for rent or mortgage which likely cannot
be found in Cupertino. The estimated average mortgage in Cupertino is the range of$4800 to $5400
per month; people looking to buy homes are looking at those costs. Nobody can afford to pay the
prices for the different types of house. There are )likely two wage owners in the family or sometimes
more than one family living in a home.
• Some communities try to encourage more development of housing that is affordable to a broader
range of folks; affordable housing has a different meaning in Cupertino when looking at housing
costs. Some cities have said they need to do something to encourage developers to provide all types
of housing for all types of people at all affordability ranges so they have set up some community
benefit programs, so that most housing or office dev elopement can be built at a certain level but in
exchange for building higher densities, for allowing higher densities, the city will ask for some type
of community benefit in the form of additional park.space, it could be in the form of facilities funding
for schools, form of more sustainable development approaches; some communities use a mechanism
to fund affordable housing; so that people get density bonuses under state law to incorporate more
affordable units with market rate units or to have in-lieu fees that are paid that help build up funds and
are used to leverage the development of housing in the community. One of the exercises will be to
help identify what their tradeoffs might be for more housing development and more affordable
housing development in Cupertino; what community benefits Cupertino might look for in exchange
for this type of housing.
• She reviewed the various types of housing concepts including shared housing, cohousing, micro
apartments and flex housing detailed in the presen:a.tion materials.
Com.Brophy:
• He referred to two slides, the first one that shows the Cupertino share of housing compared to other
cities in the county. It appears that Cupertino has the smallest RHNA number relative to its
population of any of the cities shown; the allocatiion recognizes that Cupertino has a limited amount
of vacant land and limits them to what they can absorb. He said while there are many people
concerned about having to allocate this number, she would point out that it is lower relative to their
population than any other city in the county.
• Referring to the chart illustrating jobs and population increase, he said the problem with doing 30
year projections is that they are seeing a growth of over 7,000 jobs in 30 years and the Apple project
which was approved will have a net increase of about 9,000 in itself. He felt the 30 year projections
should be taken with a grain of salt.
Ellie Fiore:
• In response to the question what generally are the considerations to calculating the allocation by city,
she said it was a complicated process, part of it relating to looking at-the vacancy rate in a particular
community over those years; some of it is land availability, some of it is how successful they have
been in the past in providing opportunities for new housing. There are a number of factors that go
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And Housing Commission Meeting
into it, including vacancy.
Laura Stepton:
• Asked for input from three residents relative to how they see the community evolving and how they
see the community moving forward with regard to housing issues.
Jennifer Griffin,Cupertino resident:
• Said she thought of Saratoga as a bedroom community with limited commercial and not any
Facebook or Google working sites there. She questioned how they determine how much housing is
needed for a city like Saratoga; also Los Altos because it is a small bedroom community. How do
they take that into account when they come up with their ABAG numbers for bedroom community
type situations. She said she did not feel that they would assume that Saratoga should be providing
chunks of housing if they don't have jobs there.
Darryl Lum,Cupertino Dentist:
• Has been in Cupertino since 1970 and practices dentistry in Cupertino. He noted how difficult it is for
a professional person starting out in the community because of the high costs of setting up a practice
and buying a home, and questioned if the city would still be able to attract enough young people with
job skills to the community. Said you have to balance the needs of the developers and making their
profit, the needs of the community and the needs of the city in generating tax revenue. Palo Alto is
giving some community benefits for higher density, higher heights and yet many Palo Alto citizens
do not like all those higher densities and higher heights.
Male Speaker:
• Said his comment related to the density on the pockets of available land in Cupertino. Some pieces of
property have one building on it and there could be housing on it, but the zoning does not allow it. Its
location would be ideal for housing and not good for commercial any longer, but to try and get zones
like that changed takes a long time.
Laura Stepton:
• Said the focus of the housing element is to understand where good locations for housing are, and the
city is in the process of doing a General Plan amendment to address that,which would be followed by
zone changes and put those new land use regulations in place that would facilitate the type of housing
that the community is looking for. Referring to a site she would term as an under-utilized site, it is
not built to its full potential and it is possible to change the land use laws, regulation, zoning that
apply to that site if that is the community's desire to move forward in that direction. If an individual
is taking that process on, it can be a lengthy process,that is why the city is being proactive in trying to
help the process along.
Jennifer Griffin, resident:
• Said when talking about housing, etc. they are talking about people who are coming into the city to
live or work but many times the existing community members who either live there or work in the
city or somewhere else but have made Cupertino their home; are neglected and not cared about. She
said that there are many neighborhoods in Cupertino that have been in existence for long periods of
time, and she worries about pressures to pull back the boundaries on some of the neighborhoods for
additional high density housing; and that the neighborhood integrity is going to be ripped up and not
respected. There needs to be something done to ensure that the neighborhoods are left intact and
respected as communities where people live and have lived for long periods of time and not have
their boundaries chopped up by additional high density housing because it causes problems. The end
result in those older neighborhoods is the loss of grocery stores, the cobbler shops, the dentist, etc.
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And Housing Commission Meeting
and it ends up with neighborhoods surrounded by 8 to 9 story high density housing and no grocery
stores, no shoe stores, etc. There needs to-be a balance; sometimes there is a push-push for high
density housing but there is no mix in that'high density housing; you need the Safeways, the grocery
stores, etc. because people don't necessarily want to have to drive out of their existing neighborhoods
to find a Safeway that is two miles away, because the Safeway that was near them got torn down for
high density housing. San Jose is in such a rush to put up their high density housing that they are
beginning to become burdensome to their neighboring cities and the impacts are beginning to show
where they put all the high density housing on the boarders of their city and the rest of the cities have
to try to deal with the traffic. There needs to be a ta.ir break that way.
Laura Stepton:
• Said Ms. Griffin made a clarifying comment when stating complete or intact neighborhoods, not
just the fact that it is a single family neighborhood but there are services within walking distance
and nearby. It is something they can look at both as part of the housing element but importantly
as well as part of the focused General Plan update that the city has going on to ensure that balance
and that there is walkable complete compact neighborhoods. The study session is a chance to talk
about constraints and housing concerns'to be able to start to investigate in greater depth the issues
the housing element needs to address.
(Male)Housing Commission member:
• Said schools is a major concern; it is already a. challenging situation in the public schools year,
particularly at the elementary level. When looking at 1,000 more units those are the types of things
when you look at the age profile of the people corning in, it becomes a concern.
Com. Gong:
• Said she presumed the silver tsunami residents were not moving in, but aging in place and the age is
increasing by residents who have been there a long time; as a result it does impact the schools but it
impacts it because they aren't the younger family, they aren't able to move in because the older
population is maintaining their housing-there. Where they think it is going to impact the schools in
number of students, in fact is it may hinder the growth of the school age population if they don't find
a compromise or a workable solution.
Laura Stepton:
• Said some of the senior residents of the community said they want to stay in Cupertino, but they are
tired of their large home,they require too much work and they want to do other things; and they also
recognize that they could free up their large homes for a family with school children who could take
advantage of the excellent schools.
Ellie Fiore:
• Said she read about the Rainbow Mansion in Cupertino where quite a few young technology
employees have created a co-op; they set up a consortium that formalizes the process where people
have to interview and apply to be considered for the co-housing. Perhaps that might work with
maintaining a senior in the house and bringing in the other elements in an existing house.
Laura Stepton:
• Responding to a question about how the school district is incorporated in terms of growth planning,
she said they have talked to the school district, and Aarti Shrivastava is in constant contact with them
and for projecting student population in Cupertino they do not follow any model, but they find they
have to rethink how they are planning for students, and are looking at growth because of what is
going on in Cupertino and the surrounding communities as well that feed into the school district,
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because the school district boundaries do not coincide with the city's boundaries.
Aarti Shrivastava:
• Said they have met with the school districts and have contracted with the school district's
demographer as well as the person who helps them with the impact fees to better understand what the
impacts are. They will work closely with staff to ascertain what their needs are regardless of what
housing is built; how does this new housing fit into it;what are the facilities' needs going to be so that
they address it more in a long term context rather than incremental, so they can work on solutions
together. She commented on how impressed they were with the city of Cupertino vs. some of the
other cities who are also clients of theirs or whose residents also come to this school district.
Laura Stepton:
• Said when they talked to the school districts, they were interested in where the housing might be in
Cupertino because it affects particular schools, and school districts are not in favor of redrawing
school boundaries.
Com. Lee:
• Many of the plots of land in Cupertino are small with different owners, so the buildable space is small
as well; which means that in the last ten years many of the housing projects have been on top, they
build up two or three stories on top of retail which has had limited success due to the fact that the
architecture screams housing not retail and parking is an issue too.
Laura Stepton:
• Said Com. Lee's remarks presented a good lead into the next exercise with the group since it is not
just about where housing might be in Cupertino, but.what might that housing be. Discussion will
include multi-family housing, apartments, condominiums, .townhomes but also mixed use
development. There are two ways to do mixed development; the first way Com. Lee described, the
European way with the shops on the bottom and homes.above, and another form of mixed use is to
take a site and have a separate retail office/commercial pad area with housing on another portion of
the site. There will be questions if it is appropriate to put mixed use development in Cupertino and
where. Said there aren't any large vacant sites in the city that require cooperation between property
owners who want to get it done or a developer who is willing to start to assemble properties. It is a
difficult model in a built out community such as"Cupertino.
Com.Brophy:
• Said it was his 7t"year on the Planning Commission and the No. 1 issue when discussing housing has
been schools. The one thing that staff has done and the Planning Commission and City Council have
tried to do is to have multi-family projects with a limited number of bedrooms to have them focus
more on the young technical people who need housing. However in talking to Cupertino residents it
appears many people don't realize the growth in school enrollment does not come from these kind of
projects but rather from the gradual replacement of the old 900,square foot homes built in the 1950s,
as those are torn down and replaced by 5 bedroom homes. There is no change in the number of
dwelling units in the city but the cumulative effect is substantial.
Laura Stepton:
• Said they heard many concerns about school impacts. Said the city has to show there is capacity
for 1064 units; they can reuse sites that were identified before through the public process if*it is
determined that those are still suitable sites for housing and the housing hasn't come to fruition. If
through the process the community and policy makers decide that those weren't good locations for
housing, they would rather have commercial or office there. They have to find additional sites for
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And Housing Commission Meeting
1064 units and there will not be credit for units built during a time period. It is starting for the period
January 1, 2015 through 2022; how will_,they accommodate 1064. If there are projects under way
now that are being entitled, the city will not get credit for those; those are essentially credits toward
the prior cycle.
• Said there were two maps available for participants to study; one map illustrates where potential
housing could be located, including multi-family and mixed use and the other is related to community
benefits that the community may be seeking if there is housing.
Those present broke up into smaller discussion groups regarding housing issues, including mapping
exercises to identify suitable housing sites in Cuper.ino and desired community benefits. Individual
group discussion was not recorded.
Laura Stepton:
• Thanked those present for participating in the disc ussion group; some housing sites were identified,
the discussion of community benefits will resume with the community at a future date. There were
many possibilities with community benefits and ]')eople were receptive to using that approach as a
tradeoff for some higher density housing in the community. She reviewed upcoming events
associated with the process of getting a housing element adopted for Cupertino. The next meeting is
scheduled for February13 in the evening with the Housing Commission. At that meeting focus will
be on the site discussion. The February 18 meeting;will focus on the General Plan amendment. The
work that has been going on to look at areas of the community that might have a General Plan
amendment will include some housing discussion that can feed into the discussion with the Housing
Commission. There will be a joint meeting with the Planning Commission and City Council on
March 4`"to settle on the housing site so the housing element can continue to move forward.
• Thanked those who attended and encouraged everyone to participate not just in the housing element
but in*the General Plan update.
Com.Brophy thanked all those who attended the study session.
Aarti Shrivastava:
• Noted that there was a website for the General Plan: www.Cupertinogpa.com ... with a tab for the
housing element. There will soon also be a setup Nvith comments.
Colleen Whitaker:
• Reported the Housing Commission meeting will be February 13, 2014 at 6:30 p.m. The Planning
Commission wilt meet January 28, 2014 at 6:45 p.im.
Com. Brophy adjourned the meeting.
Respectfully Submitted: .s` s X,f ,;'/
Elizabeth EK Recording § cre ary
Approved as Presented: April 22, 2014
i i